I already can hear it, the outcry if no player gets elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“The Hall is in trouble.”

“The writers are fools.”

“SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.”

Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

Yes, there is a chance — a good chance, perhaps — that no candidate received the required 75 percent of the vote from the voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

The ballots were due on New Year’s Eve. The results will be announced Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET on MLB Network. But if the voters indeed pitched a shutout, it almost certainly will be a one-year aberration, not a reflection of any larger truths.

I recognize that snark is the preferred mode of communication in a breathless social-media environment full of knee-jerk reactions and instant expertise. But all those preparing to get lathered up, take a deep breath and calm down.

Oh, I’m not downplaying the significance of what might occur. The Hall, as an institution, surely would prefer that Induction Weekend features, well, an actual inductee. Even in 1996, the last time that the BBWAA failed to elect a player, the Veterans Committee delivered Jim Bunning, Earl Weaver and two posthumous honorees, Bill Foster and Ned Hanlon.

This year, the third of the VC’s new rotating eras format, produced three pre-integration era inductees — umpire Hank O’Day, former Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert and 19th-century catcher/third baseman Deacon White. All have been dead since at least 1939.

More than 40 living Hall of Famers are expected to attend the induction ceremony, but the attendance at Cooperstown could fall below 10,000, the approximate number who attended the ’96 ceremony. It certainly won’t approach the record 75,000 that saw Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. inducted in 2007.

The Hall would not sugarcoat such an outcome and pretend it’s good for business. But Hall officials will tell you that they prefer a true election, whatever the outcome. They also will tell you that with Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas coming onto the ballot next year, they’re confident that the podium will not be empty in 2014.

Heck, it’s not even a foregone conclusion that the podium will be empty this year, not when Jack Morris received 66.7 percent of the vote a year ago and Craig Biggio and Mike Piazza are first-time candidates with no known connections to performance-enhancing drugs.

If no player is elected, it will be due to the large number of intriguing first-time eligible candidates — voters can select no more than 10 players — and more significantly, the consternation over the candidates linked to PEDs.

But that consternation — the intense debate over what to do with Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others — is not a bad thing for the Hall. If anything, it underscores the special place that Cooperstown holds in every fan’s heart.

The voters are easy to criticize. Some baseball writers who are not voters take particular delight in crushing those of us who are (a writer gets to vote after serving 10 consecutive years in the BBWAA, and full-time writers from websites are now eligible to become members.)

No problem — we’re all fair game. But the truth is, I’ve read and heard some remarkably intelligent discourses from my colleagues over the past several weeks — even ones who I strongly disagree with. The high level of debate has made me proud to be a member of the BBWAA.

One non-voter referred to those of us who struggled with our votes as “drama queens,” which I found rather amusing. Would it be better if we approached our ballots frivolously, without thought? Sorry, most of us feel a strong sense of responsibility to the process. The public hand-wringing is largely an attempt by many writers to be transparent to their readers.

Baseball is a talking sport, a sport that produces arguments like none other. The Hall arguments are especially passionate. You may agree with some, disagree with others. But the debate over the PED users, while occasionally maddening, is not a bad thing for the Hall, or for baseball. We’re talking, after all, about the game’s soul.

I fully expect the Twitter version of a banshee howl if no player is elected, but no change will need to be made to the voting procedures, particularly when we likely are looking at a one-time result. If the same thing happened in 2014 and ’15, that would be something different, an unacceptable outcome. At that point, the Hall would need to adjust.

I’m not saying the BBWAA voters are perfect — we have made mistakes, and we undoubtedly will make more. But for the most part, we’ve gotten it right over the years, and I’m confident we’ll eventually get to the right place on the PED users — whatever that place may be.

Shut the hell up. A shrine my ass. Ruth and Cobb were known hooligans and countless others in the hall are not perfect choir boys. Its a type of sport reward not the Nobel peace prize.

WTF? I don't think it should be a shrine. But that seems to be what they are trying to treat it like considering this year was the best hitter in the history of baseball and one of the winningest cy young winner and neither can get it. And may never.
Since they call the place in Cooperstown The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. They should treat it like a Museum.

Bonds and Clemons are first ballot. Baseball had a problem as a whole and now we are going to punish players with HOF denials. Its stupid and a worthless thing to do. Like still keeping Rose out. Baseball voters are so snotty.

Without the steroid scandal, I'd absolutely agree. But there's no way the Baseball Writers of America were going to make Bonds and Clemons first ballot Hall of Famers. I think they'll both get in someday but first ballot? No way.

Rose admitted to betting on baseball. Eight men were suspended for life back in the early 1920's, so Rose knew the consequences. If Rose hadn't been a Major League manager while betting on baseball, no one would care. But how can you justify a guy putting a guy in the Hall that bet on games, and possibly affecting their outcome, for his own personal (and financial) gain?

Clemons, Bonds, McGwire, etc should never be voted in. The rules are the rules, it is clear they lack character, integrity, and sportsmanship, and you can take all your arguments about greenies, uppers, and spitballs, and you can go stuff it. You know whats like steroids? Steroids. Thats it, there is nothing comparable. None of that other stuff dramatically changes your body, damages your health, and forces other players who otherwise wouldn't have doped, to dope to keep their jobs. Many players extended careers because of it, and that means some honest clean ballplayers somewhere toiled away in the minors and never got called up because of it. Why not think about them? I don't care if baseball was complicit, those players knew they were cheating, and they did it anyway.

What an absolute load of hypocritical, sanctimonious horse shit based on no evidence this paragraph was.

I'll never get those who are perfectly fine with other forms of cheating in baseball (amphetamines, greenie use, spitballs, corked bats, etc.), but believe steroids somehow cross the line and that there is "nothing comparable" to them. Taking that opinion both a complete lack of perspective about baseball's drug culture and baseball history.

It doesnt matter what you do or did off the field. The Roid Boys and Rose dont get in because what they did affected the integrity of the game.

But how do you know which players used steroids and which players didn't use steroids in this HOF vote? For that matter, how do you know which players used them throughout baseball history? And why is one performance enhancer (steroids) considered differently than other performance enhancers (like say amphetamines)? And if you believe that all steroid users shouldn't make it in, should the HOF investigate and remove every player in the Hall that they find to have used any kind of steroid (or any kind of performance enhancer)?

Shut the hell up. A shrine my ass. Ruth and Cobb were known hooligans and countless others in the hall are not perfect choir boys. Its a type of sport reward not the Nobel peace prize.

It says right in the voting requirements that character should be considered. They don't normally consider off the field issues as character issues, but it's reasonable to say that steroid use is a character issue.

As far as blaming the writers for not electing Bonds or Clemens - no one said they had to do steroids. They would have been hall of famers if they hadn't done steroids. Especially Bonds. He was already going to the Hall of Fame. Nobody made him do steroids. The person most to blame about Bonds not getting in is Bonds. He did it to himself.

And the writers aren't keeping Pete Rose out, and neither is the HOF. The writers and HOF don't have anything to do with Rose not being in the HOF, really.